What are Scrum Artifacts?

Scrum Artifacts are the documents that are created during the activities being performed. They provide key information about the product that is under development, activities that are planned and the activities that are done in the project.

Let us now learn about some of the Scrum Artifacts -

• Product Backlog
• Sprint Backlog
• Burndown charts
• Product increment

Product Backlog

A product Backlog is a document that would change and get updated as and when the team learns more, as the market conditions change and when the competitors bring out new products and also when the customer gives input for what they need.

1. Description
2. Order
3. Estimate
4. Value to the business

The Product Owner would be responsible to capture the needs of all the stakeholders within the backlog. When Sales team members or support team members have the required product changes or improvements, the product owner would first listen, try to understand the requests, and then add those items to the backlog in order to showcase these improvements or fixes. Paying attention is really important to the stakeholders. So, because of this reason, the backlog should be somewhere where in other people in the organization can see it.

The Product Owner would also add to the product backlog when he or she receives new ideas from the development team or customers.

Backlog Grooming

Product backlog needs to be edited and updated according to the items altering. So, the backlog would be frequently reviewed, and things would be identified to know whether -

1. Some backlog items are no longer necessary.
2. Estimates have changed for some backlog items.
3. The outcome that was intended for an item would be achieved by another feature.
4. A specific problem is fixed.

Sprint Backlog

Once the sprint planning is done, the team would work only on a chosen set of items in the next sprint. Those items will then be removed from the product backlog and moved into the sprint backlog. The sprint backlog would be guided by a sprint goal. Changes to the sprint backlog will occur as the sprint evolves. A new feature on which the team is would be working can be would mean that something is added or removed from the sprint backlog.

Sprint backlog is the actual work which the team currently plans to complete during the sprint. It must be visible easily as the stakeholders may want to notice the progress.

Burndown charts

A Burndown chart is a graphical representation of the amount of estimated remaining work. The chart would represent the amount of remaining work on the vertical axis with time on the horizontal axis.

Things always would not go according to the plan. A ten-hour task might take 12 hours. OR, an eight-hour task might take 2 hours. So, we must have a graph that would move towards a Zero as you move to the right. The image shown below would represent the expected shape of our burn down chart -

In the above chart, the gray line represents the estimated number of hours that are left. Gradually, this would fall to Zero as the sprint comes to a conclusion. However bounce around a bit to reflect the variability of every day's actual remain in , this line would g work.

Product increment

Product improvement would be the actual important artifact. This would be the new code which has been written in order to enhance the features or product's usability. When a sprint ends,then the team would have produced "Potentially shippable code".The product owner would decide not to release for few days/weeks/months but, could release if she wanted to.Every sprint would add to the product. When a new set of code is added to the sprint, then that code will combine with the existing code in order to work well. If the new features work well on their own but breaks an existing feature in your product, then it means that the product is not "potentially shippable".

So, Scrum teams would create product increments that can be potentially achievable. The existing product would be improved by adding new features or usability that would work well with the existing code.